15 July 2010

Put not thy faith in politicians

"Europe falls out of love with Barack Obama" says Nile Gardiner in today's Telegraph. While perhaps true of countries which retain some self-respect, I doubt if it applies to Britain. The toad Clinton unfailingly attracts adoring crowds when he visits this country, despite regarding it with contempt when president.

But to talk of "falling out of love" with another country's president simply points to the childishness of projecting yearnings onto a distant figure in the first place. The One is what he always was, the product of the corrupt Democratic Party machine in Illinois, with extremely little executive experience. His mandate came about because of the swinish abuse of power by the Republican Party and because of white guilt or, in the case of my vote, a desire to take the wind out of the sails of race hustlers like Jackson and Sharpton.

It should have come as no surprise that a president from the left wing of the Democratic Party would prove to be highly divisive domestically, to the detriment of his party in Congress. Over-represented as it is in academic and media circles, the "left" in America over-reaches because it sincerely believes that the country - and the world - is athirst for "progressive" leadership.

The last similarly deluded individual to occupy the White House was Jimmy Carter, who also came to power on a wave of revulsion against Republican swinishness. By the end of his only term, Carter had reminded the American people that Democrats are poor stewards of the economy and that "niceness" does not cut it in international affairs. I have put blanks in Gardiner's closing paragraph to illustrate the strong sense of déjà vu:

[ ] may not have been the most popular figure in Europe when he was president, but at least he was respected by European leaders, and feared by his enemies. In contrast [ ] is not only disliked abroad, but also increasingly isolated among America’s allies, and viewed as weak by America’s adversaries. So much for his boast of “restoring” America’s standing in the world.